Time

Have you ever noticed how quickly a day passes? Or a week? Or a
whole year? I mean, one minute it is your birthday, the next it is
Christmas, and before you know it, it is your birthday again. A day's
work - it is not even really worth going to work, if you get down to
it. You take ages getting there, make a coffee - and it is lunchtime
already. You have just finished eating your lunch and - hey presto -
time to go home. My theory is that it takes longer to get to and from
work than you actually spend working. Weeks pass in the blink of an
eye. Months blur into years - you catch my drift.

However, do you remember how slowly time passed when you were a kid?
One class at school could last forever. Lives could be destroyed in
just those forty minutes. Also, and mercifully, the summer holidays
would last a lifetime. Do you remember all those things you did during
your summer hols? I remember every one of them. Well, almost every one,
from the age of five onwards. The reason I do is because they seemed to
last just about forever. I mean, they make movies about children's
summer holidays, for crying out loud. They can do that because such a
lot happens during that time.

Or so I thought.

This observation is, of course, based on my own experience. I had no
reason to doubt that my perception was correct. Little did I know that
I was totally, dangerously wrong. Until one day...

"I haven't got time for that, Mum," Sebastian, my ten-year-old said.
He was sitting on the floor in the lounge, sorting some papers for
school, conversing with my wife who was in another room, far enough
away so that I could not hear her reply. She did reply, however, and my
son heard her. He sighed. "Mum, really, there isn't enough time! It's
not even worth going to school, really, by the time I get there it is
time to go home."

I stopped reading my paper and folded down the top third, which
allowed me to peer over the top of it at my son. He paid no attention
to me and continued to rummage through his papers. "Shit," he said when
he obviously could not find what he was looking for.

I took my pipe out of my mouth and balanced it in the ashtray. "What
did you say?" I asked. He moaned. "Sorry, Dad, bad word. I didn't mean
to say it, it just came out." "What?" I said, slightly confused.
Sebastian looked at me strangely. "Never mind that, now," I said, and
Sebastian managed to look relieved and concerned at the same time. "I
mean, what did you say to your mother?"

Sebastian looked guilty, like he was racking his brain to check if he
had been cheeky to his mother. When he found no evidence of that, he
expanded on what he had said to her. "Mum wants me to take up those
stupi... those recorder lessons again, but I can only do it at
playtime, and there just isn't enough time!"

Gillian, my wife had come up behind him and ruffled his hair. "The
lessons are not stupid. They have cost us a lot of money, and we want
you to go again," she said while he was straightening out his
hair.

"Never mind that now," I said to her, sounding slightly exasperated.
Both of them looked at me.

Gillian frowned and put her hands on her hips. "Then what, may I ask,
should I mind? Is your son's education not worth minding?"

I cut her off with a wave of my hand. I had leaned forwards and
studied my son. "What did you say about the time?" I said, but it was
little more than a whisper.

Sebastian looked close to tears. "That there isn't enough of it?" he
suggested unhappily. I leaned back. Such a lot of wisdom from a
ten-year-old, especially wisdom he should not normally gather until he
is at least 25. "How do you know that?" I asked him. Sebastian
shrugged. "What's to know?" he said. "Isn't it obvious that there is
never enough time to do anything?"

I supposed it was - when you were a grownup. Of course, Sebastian was
only repeating my own observations. But I cast my mind back. When I had
been ten years old, time had moved slowly. I had assumed that time
moved quicker the older you got, probably something to do with getting
closer to death and having less time to do all the things you want to
do. What do I know? Einstein's theory of relativity came to mind. Did
time really move faster or slower at all, or was it all a matter of
perception? So, why was my ten-year-old son of the opinion that time
moved too quickly?

There was more evidence of that which I had never paid attention to
before but which became apparent to me at that moment. Aren't all
children prone to say, "Just five more minutes," when they don't want
to go to bed? Mine had frequently been heard quoting, "Only half an
hour to bedtime, not worth starting a game now!" Or a friend would
phone and he would say, "No point me coming 'round now, I will have to
be home for dinner in an hour."

I was in deep thought and only distantly heard Sebastian ask his
mother if I was all right. She spoke to him quietly and ushered him out
of the room. When she closed the door she turned around to me.

"What is the matter with you?" she asked. I looked at her. "Have you
ever noticed how quickly time is moving these days?" I asked her. She
sat down opposite me and studied me closely. "What are you talking
about?" she asked. I got comfortable in my chair and explained my
theory to her. "You are nuts," she said when I was finished. I was
disappointed. "No, not at all," I began to defend my theory, but she
tutted and walked out of the room. Okay, suit yourself.

I appeared to be the only one to notice that the Emperor wasn't
wearing any clothes - to say that there was something seriously wrong
with time. I thought the reason that nobody else noticed probably lay
in the fact that time as a concept was so fundamental to our existence
that people just accepted it as it was. But I had noticed. And I was
watching out.

I started watching time. Clocks, for example. I sat for ages watching
the big hand go round and round. And every so often it would skip. It
would be, say seven minutes past three in the morning. And instead of
steadily moving from seven minutes to eight minutes past, the big hand
would move straight to ten minutes past, skipping two whole minutes in
one go. You could say that probably my clock was broken, and naturally
that was what I assumed at first. But I bought a new clock, and then
another one to be absolutely sure. All seventy-five clocks I bought
recently did the same. All my watches, alarm clock, video recorder
timers - they all skipped whole minutes in the course of a day.

And then I noticed something else: The little black spots that are all
around us. At first I thought they were a figment of my imagination.
Maybe staying up too late at night watching my clocks had made my eyes
weary. But after a while I realized that the little black spots were
really there. And not only that, they seemed to have a purpose, a
direction, a mind of their own. They ate time.

That's right. I'm surprised you have never noticed them. They are
everywhere. Most of the time they don't seem to be doing much. But if
you watch them closely, you can see what they are up to. They eat time.
You watch them really closely and, suddenly, they jump, all together.
The world goes black, and when everything is back to normal, a couple
of minutes will have passed. They eat time.

Of course, I could not keep such important information to myself. I
don't know where the time-eaters came from, but I sure know what they
want: They are after us. By stealing our time they are getting bigger
and bigger, and we have less and less time, until one day, we have no
time left. I don't know what will happen then, but I figured I'd leave
it to the scientists to work that one out.

At first I didn't know who to tell. Gillian didn't understand me.
Sebastian was too young. I decided on the Government. After all, they
were supposed to be in charge. To my utter dismay, they never answered
my letters. But we were running out of time - literally. I approached
local and national newspapers, television stations and NASA. I
explained my observations in detail. I drew diagrams. I recorded the
time-eaters on video. Everybody was blind to what I had to show them.
They were in with the time-eaters.

There was only one way. I broke into the BBC's offices one night and
broadcast my video to the nation. Now everybody knew. It didn't matter
that the police came and took me away. I had done my duty. What the
people did with the information was up to them. I kept asking the
policemen if they saw my video. They said no. I showed them the
time-eaters around us. They were quite big by now, I mean, everybody
could see them. The policemen said no.

The doctor who came to see me wasn't like a real doctor. I mean, he
had no stethoscope or anything. He just asked me lots of things. I kept
telling him, we haven't got time for 20 questions, we must stop the
time-eaters. He said that the Government had everything under control.
I was relieved. I asked him if the Prime Minister had seen my video. He
said yes.

Gillian came to visit me yesterday. She cried, but I told her
everything was all right now, and I was going to be home soon. After
all, how long could they keep me? I had saved the world from the
time-eaters. I was a hero. Any day now I will get a medal or something.
I can wait. I seem to have a lot of time in here.